Gift Guide for Toddlers (Ages 1-3)

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Christmas is my very favorite holiday. It's time to start thinking of the perfect gift for your children. First, I am sharing a gift guide for toddlers ages 1-3. Be on the lookout for my next post, which is geared for older boys ages 8-9.

This gift guide will be divided into a few categories:

• Experiences
• Outdoor
• Indoor/Multi Use

Let's start with EXPERIENCES. 

I love the idea of experience gifts. Last year we purchased tickets for my son to see his favorite wrestler, AJ Styles, at an event in a neighboring state. Not only did he get to experience the show, but he and his daddy made it an overnight trip, which was exciting all in itself. Some experience gifts I would recommend are:

• Zoo - Purchase a family membership to your local zoo for year-round fun! We have found this to pay for itself after only a few trips to the zoo and is well worth the price! Plus, everyone in the family gets to enjoy!
  
  
• Children's Museum - We love our children's museum and go often! It was well worth the price for a family membership so we could go as often as we wanted. This is great for those cold months that we are indoors the majority of the day.
  
  
• Other museums - If you have other museums in your area, whether history museums or science museums, family memberships are great for experience gifts. 

Let's move on to OUTDOOR gift ideas.

• Water table - Water play is so much fun for kiddos and even if they have to wait a few months for warmer weather, a water table makes the perfect gift. We have this one from Step 2 and love it. 

• Tricycles - As your little one gets older, it's time to begin introducing tricycles! We have both (or are getting both from family) the Schwinn and Radio Flyer. 

  

• Picnic table - My little ones love having picnic lunches outside during the summer. This picnic table by Little Tikes is perfect for that. 

• Basketball goal - This basketball goal by Little Tikes is the perfect starter set for a young basketball player. My girls watch their older brother play basketball, so I know they'll love getting to play it themselves. 

• Little Tikes Cozy Coupe - This is a classic and it is so much fun for little ones! We were gifted this princess edition, but the traditional red/yellow is just as sweet. 

• Little Tikes T-Ball set - This is another cute beginner athlete set. My son loved this when he was young. To this day, baseball is his favorite sport!

Now let's move on to INDOOR/MULTI USE gift ideas. 

• Little Tikes Mini Trampoline - We recently received this gift and my two year olds LOVE it. 

• Play kitchen - Our little ones will soon receive a kitchen and I cannot wait! A play kitchen was one of my most loved toys as a child and I cannot wait for my littles to enjoy one. We decided on this Kidcraft play kitchen. We decided on a corner kitchen since our space allows it and it looks big enough for 2 to comfortably play. 

• Play food - If you go with a play kitchen, you'll need accessories like play food. We debated on wooden vs. plastic play food. In the end, we decided to go with plastic, but we knew all plastic play food isn't made the same. I loved the durability of the play food at our local children's museum. It is from Lakeshore Learning, so we invested in it. 
  
  
• IKEA Flisat table - This table is PERFECT for sensory play, which is what we plan on doing with it! We purchased the white Trofast baskets to go down inside the Flisat table. 

• Mega Blocks Lego set - This is a classic beginner Lego set. They come in primary colors, pinks, and they even have a stack and learn set. 

•  Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Sink Toy - This has been a favorite toy of my littles for well over a year! It is great to teach the very beginning stages of brushing teeth, combing hair, and washing hands.

• Melissa & Doug Geometric Stacker - I originally was looking for a simple circular stacker, but found this set from Melissa & Doug and grabbed it. It is great for hand/eye coordination and fine motor skills.

• Toy animals - We bought a ton of animal figures from Hobby Lobby when my son was two years old. Six years later, they are still in GREAT condition and have proven to be WELL WORTH the investment. I recommend a high quality set that will last for years. 

 

• Puzzles - My favorite puzzles are from Melissa & Doug. They are such good quality that lasts. This farm animal puzzle is a favorite of ours.
  
  
• Kinetic sand - Kinetic sand is so great for sensory play. We use it often! 

• Do-A-Dot markers - These markers are great for crafts! We use them with printable Do-A-Dot sheets online. Great for hand/eye coordination!

• Dress up - Superhero capes, princess dresses, etc. What's not to love?! We are dedicating a spot in our playroom just for dress up. We have a Minnie Mouse dress up set, a Riverbanks Zoo vest, a superhero cape, and a veterinarian vest. 

• Play Doh - I know, it's messy. Little pieces of it get everywhere no matter how careful your children are. I like to throw down a sheet before we play so that (hopefully) all of the remnants stay on the sheet. Play Doh is GREAT for sensory play. We also like the Play Doh tools. 

There you have it! LOTS of gift ideas for toddlers ages 1-3! I hope this was helpful to you. What items are on your list for your little ones?

Be on the lookout for my next gift guide --> boys ages 8-9! 

Halloween Activities for Toddlers

Today I'm sharing some of the Halloween activities I did this season with my two year olds. Most of these ideas involve sensory play and arts/crafts. Admittedly, Halloween isn't my favorite holiday, BUT we enjoyed lots of Halloween themed activities leading up to Halloween. 

We do a LOT of sensory play activities. One of my girls loves sensory play, while one is a little more hesitant. It is so important to me to expose them to sensory play for sensory development. 

Activity #1: 

Our first activity was a sensory bin that involved shaving cream and several Halloween themed goodies: skeletons, eyeballs, and spiders. The spiders and skeletons were purchased in a pack at Wal-Mart for around $1. I purchased the eyeballs years ago (for a different activity) from Dollar Tree. I placed all of the spooky figures into the shaving cream and had my girls pick them out and play in the shaving cream. We may have had a moment of one falling INTO the bin and getting shaving cream everywhere, but hey - it was an easy clean up! 

Activity #2: 

I created another spooky sensory bin using black webbing, mini pumpkins, (both purchased from Dollar Tree), and spiders. This bin was met with a little more hesitation, but they ended up enjoying it. The spiders got hooked in the webbing, so we used some fine motor skills to "rescue" them. 

Activity #3: 

After "rescuing" the spiders, we organized them by color! Easy, quick, and reinforces colors! Both of my girls call any and all spiders "Itsy" so we organized all of the Itsy's! 

Activity #4: 

If you can't tell already, I'm all about reusing materials I have on hand to get the most bang for my buck. We created this Witch's Brew for some spooky water play using the same materials listed above. 

Activity #5: 

It wouldn't be Halloween without carving or painting pumpkins! I knew that carving pumpkins would be too much for my sensory hesitant girl (and honestly by son has never liked it either!), so we opted to paint pumpkins using these Mod Sticks Tempera Paint Markers. They worked perfect for this activity! Next year we will try carving pumpkins to see how my girls like it! 

Fall Sensory Bin

Sensory play is one of my favorite activities to do with my littles, so I wanted to share a quick and simple fall sensory bin with you!

My favorite sensory bins are the ones that you can throw together quickly and on a budget. All of the accessories for this sensory bin were purchased at Dollar Tree, making the total cost of the project $6.00. I purchased two packs of leaves, two door hangers with bells, and two pumpkins. Score!

My littles have played with this sensory bin several times. One loves the bells and constantly shakes those around, while the other grabs as many leaves as possible and throws them into the air.

   You could also add real fall leaves to the bins for even more fun! 

Five for Friday {Easter Edition}

Hello y'all! I know I've been MIA for some time. I am just enjoying being a stay at home mom while I can. We've been busy playing outside, working on house projects {which are never-ending}, finishing our first soccer season, and other fun things. I just had to link up this week to show y'all some of our Easter fun! 

{one}

I picked up these cute, little, glittery eggs at The Dollar Tree. I wasn't sure what we would do with them, but I knew we could use them at home and that I could hopefully use them in the classroom when I go back.

We sorted by color and used them as manipulatives for another activity. 

{two}

Number-Dot Activity - I wrote numbers on one half of the egg and made that number of dots on the other half. We mixed them all up, sorted them into eggs with dots and eggs with numbers. E had fun matching them.

{three}

Easter Egg Addition - On another set of Easter eggs, I wrote simple addition sentences on half of the egg and the answers on the other side. This is where those cute, glittery eggs came in handy as manipulatives. E did so well with this activity! 

{four}

Easter Egg Jump - This activity involved lots of movement, which is always good! I did this activity too and wore my Polar FT4 watch to see how many calories I burned, which was 47 calories {although it felt like it should've been a lot more}. I wrote numbers on pieces of foam {you could use paper or any material you can write on}. When E picked an egg, he read the number aloud and we jumped that many times. I did numbers 1-12. So, we jumped 78 times. Then, we started all over and did the same activity, but with jumping jacks. It was a really FUN activity and E really enjoyed it!

{five}

Sadly, I don't have a picture for this but I wanted to share how I used Easter eggs in my fourth grade classroom. I love using seasonal manipultives and you can use them no matter what age you teach. In my fourth grade class, my partner teacher and I wrote down Math problems and put one in each egg. When the student got an egg, they solved the problem and then got a piece of candy if their answer was right. If it wasn't, we'd talk about where they went wrong and they were encouraged to try again and if they needed assistance, they could ask a classmate for help. It was a fun way to have some Easter fun while using standards! 

Happy Easter, friends! 

Letter Bb - BEARS

Last week we finished our letter Bb for bears! I found these letter Bb puzzles online. They were good to see how the letter Bb is formed.

I also really liked this bear coloring page. For a non-reader, it was easy to see what color the bear should be - except for white and grey. Of course, the word "white" couldn't be in the color white since you wouldn't be able to see it. That confused E - the color it was written in was gray so naturally, he thought that two bears were supposed to be gray.

Even though this printable from Confessions of a Homeschooler uses butterfly for the letter Bb, we still used it to find letter Bb's.

We also worked on some basic bear addition! Note to self - work on writing numbers ... I had to help him with all of these.

Our last activity was too difficult so we made our own rules! At first, I called out #s for E to put a dot on. He got frustrated easily because there were lots of numbers he didn't know (20+). So we took turns calling out #s that he knew and then just put dots on the rest!